Site Mobile Navigation

Personal Business; Old and New Ways to Write a Will

THERE is much more talk about mortality these days, yet many people have never bothered to make arrangements to distribute their assets after they are gone.

Fifty-nine percent of adult Americans do not have wills, according to a nationwide survey released just last month by Findlaw.com, an online legal information and services company. And while writing a will may be about as pleasant as undergoing a medical test, it is a chore that may be just as important, experts say. If you die without a will, or intestate, what happens to your estate -- and in some cases, the well-being of your survivors -- may be decided by strangers in state courts.

Perhaps the quickest and least expensive way to draft a will is to do it yourself. There are many computer software products, manuals and kits that offer help, but they are not for everyone and can sometimes be difficult to use.

These self-help legal products, usually costing less than $50, are adequate for writing a first will, particularly for anyone who plans to leave property to just one person, usually a spouse, or to divide an estate in a fairly straightforward way -- say, to all the children in equal shares.

People with large estates and more complex wishes about how to distribute their property, however, may find themselves frustrated by the limitations of most software programs. And even people who may think their situations are straightforward may run into problems. They should seek the advice of a lawyer or an estate planner.

''When people call me, they oftentimes have in mind something very simple,'' said Paul Wolsk, a lawyer in Manhattan who does some estate planning. It is only after he starts asking detailed questions, he said, that his clients realize how involved the will-writing process sometimes must be.

Many software products mimic the question-and-answer format used by lawyers. Quicken Lawyer 2002 Personal Deluxe, created by Nolo Press, the legal self-help publisher in conjunction with Intuit, asks users a series of questions -- like whether all the property will be left to one person or organization.

Based on the answers, the program either asks for more information or moves to the next topic. For example, if a user says he has children who are minors, he will be asked to specify a guardian. At the end of the interview, the program compiles a document, which the publisher says qualifies as a legal will everywhere in the United States, except in Louisiana, which has unique rules governing wills. The document must be printed and signed in the presence of at least two witnesses.

Two other software programs -- Broderbund's Family Lawyer 2002 Deluxe and Kiplinger's WillPower, published by Block Financial, work in much the same way. In general, these three programs are easy to install and simple to use. Each took less than five minutes to load onto a PC, and the will-making feature of the software took less than an hour to complete. (They also include templates to create other legal documents like a living trust or a health care directive.)

The software programs can also provide some savings over legal fees, because the documents can be modified and updated as life circumstances change.

However, all three have the same basic drawback: it is difficult for a software program to take into account all the complex situations that can arise when dividing one's estate, even in seemingly simple situations.

For instance, while the three programs allow users to specify that an estate be split between two beneficiaries, only the Nolo and Broderbund programs allow each of those two beneficiaries to be named as an alternate for the other, and none of the programs permit naming a third person as the beneficiary in case the other two die first.

Another limitation of self-help resources, particularly software, Mr. Wolsk said, is that they cannot ask the same probing questions that lawyers or estate planners could, like whether a client wants to make a bequest to a university. And people who handle their own wills must be careful to avoid any mistakes that might invalidate the documents, like unstapling the pages or signing at a different time than the witnesses, he said.

BUT for people who need simple wills and who follow directions carefully, these programs are certainly better than not having any will, legal experts say.

At a time when people are feeling uneasy about their futures because of the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, a quick and easy option for creating a will may fill a need for those looking to put their affairs in order.

Mr. Warner says sales of the Quicken Lawyer software more than doubled in the week after the attacks. ''People look around for some way to react,'' he said. ''And protecting people around them or providing for them is high on the list.''